The Continuing Saga of Aimee Semple McPherson

Aimee Semple McPherson

July 24, 1927
Echo Park

Relations between evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson and her mother, Mrs. Minnie "Ma" Kennedy, are reported to be on the mend today after a recent dust-up concerning the management of McPherson’s Angelus Temple. Kennedy had been acting as business manager while Sister Aimee was off on a preaching tour, but a series of burglaries (whispers said embezzlements) caused some church members—her daughter apparently among them—to lose confidence in Kennedy’s abilities. Sister Aimee cut her trip short earlier this week and returned to Los Angeles, where yesterday she announced that her mother was going to take a "long needed" vacation to the Holy Land.

Today, however, Sister Aimee presented her mother with three options by way of a peace pact. Mrs. Kennedy could either (1) remain at the church but not in a managerial position; (2) take control of the entire organization while Sister Aimee founded a new and separate church; or (3) retire from all active participation in the church and receive "a substantial income from Angelus Temple" for the rest of her life.

Mrs. Kennedy declined comment (though reporters noted her tearful visage). It is anticipated she will choose the first option. Sister Aimee meanwhile emphatically denied any personal animosity between the women (seen here reunited, along with Aimee’s children, after last year’s "kidnapping") or even that anyone had tried to oust her mother from the church in the first place.

In another blow to the scandal-plagued evangelist, former Angelus Temple band leader Gladwyn Nichols today announced his reasons for leaving McPhersons’s church to found his own, chief among them being Sister Aimee’s "sensational" alleged abduction of last May. Nichols also pointed to alleged financial improprieties at Angelus Temple, and condemned Sister Aimee’s "flagrant … activities in obtaining publicity" including "posing before the news camera in stylish and expensive dresses" and "being photographed with bobbed hair."

Death Car

death car headline

July 23, 1927
Los Angeles

Detective Lieutenants Kallmeyer, Werne, and Roberts spent all day searching for the three contemptible men who cruelly drove away from a hit-and-run accident which left nineteen year old Aristo Santelanto of 712 Clara Street, dead at the scene.

The hardworking Santelanto was with a crew of men repairing railway tracks at Washington Street and Cimarron Avenue when an automobile that was traveling at approximately sixty miles an hour struck him. Without slowing, the death car sped away.

A sharp eyed witness to the crime furnished detectives with numbers from the car’s license plate. The investigation was complicated because the crime car had traded hands several times over a period of six months. Undeterred, the cops persisted in their search and as a result, A.T. House, 32, of Lankershim (now North Hollywood), was handcuffed and taken into custody for suspicion of manslaughter.

House’s passengers, Eugene Long, 20, and Paul Post, 32, both of Lankershim, were picked up by police at Sunset Boulevard and Wilcox Street, where they were employed.  The two men were taken to the City Jail and charged with failure to render aid.

New Car Blues

new car blues

“… Is that its horn sounding
through the night or something darker
that needs to speak? “New Car Blues” – Charles Fishman

Los Angeles
July 23, 1927

World renowned psychologist, astrologer, palm reader, and clairvoyant Ralph Wagner, is shown in the photograph above being congratulated by his brother after purchasing a sporty new Chandler Royal eight roadster.

Mr. Wagner boasts an impressive roster of achievements as a psychic. He foretold the World War back in 1908, and he predicted the recent Weepah gold strike in October of 1926. During the past five years more than 54,000 Angelenos have consulted the palm reader for advice!

Ralph was dazzled by the performance of the vehicle and having read the palms of dozens of Chandler owners, he considered it a great buy, even though at prices ranging from $1495 to $2375 ($17,901.51 to $28,438.85 USD 2007), it was costlier than many other automobiles. Ralph was so passionate about his purchase that he raved, “…after having investigated the stability of the Chandler factory I knew that I was making no mistake in buying a Chandler, for their financial statement reads as solidly as the rock of Gibraltar.”

Poor Ralph – bad vibes must have jammed his psychic radar…or maybe the stars were out of alignment. By 1929, parts for his snazzy roadster would be difficult to find. Chandler’s best year was 1927 when they sold over 20,000 cars – one of them to our psychic friend. Anticipating continued stellar sales, the car maker expanded too quickly and by the end of 1928 they were over $500,000 ($5,987,126.44 USD 2007) in debt. Chandler was purchased by Hupp Motor Company in 1929 and vanished from the planet.

Will someone please check on the rock of Gibraltar, and give us a call?

“… In time the Rockies may crumble,
Gibraltar may tumble,
There’re only made of clay…” – George Gershwin

1947project Podcast #4, July 22 2007

The 4th biweekly 1947project podcast is now online, and can be accessed at the internet archive, at our new MOLI.com page (a new site offering free hosting for all your bulky media along with a personalized profile) or at iTunes. Pick yer poison.

About this episode: This edition of the true crime time travel podcast has a bare bones cast, following Crimebo’s horrific clown car spill on the 405 and Mary’s escape to the shore. But Kim, Nathan and Joan are on hand to share several daffy bits of 1927 Southern Californiana, including the tale of a business partnership severed by a hammer, the couple with two legs between ’em caught driving drunk down Riverside way, and a rumination on the timely fad of flagpole sitting. The 1927 and 2007 events calendars are shared and new advertisers come aboard, including the League of Bloated Plutocrats, Masonic Jars and a corrective school for girls whose mothers think they’re fast. Join us on your
computational device! Today!

Esotouric Named Best Tours by the Downtown News

We’re very happy to announce that the best of issue of the Downtown News is on the stands, and Esotouric has been named Best Tours.

In 2005, Kim Cooper, Larry Harnisch and Nathan Marsak created the 1947project, a blog that chronicled a different L.A. crime for each day of that year. The project was such a success that they followed up with a similar blog detailing the sordid affairs of 1907 and 1927. Now, Cooper and others lead excursions for a tour bus company called Esotouric. The four- or five-hour adventures canvass the city, highlighting crime sites from the heinous to the quirky. This summer, Esotouric debuted "John Fante’s Dreams of Bunker Hill," which visited the Downtown haunts of Arturo Bandini, the protagonist of Fante’s 1939 novel Ask the Dust. In August, don’t miss the Charles Bukowski birthday tour, which celebrates what would have been the author’s 87th birthday. At esotouric.com.-LL

Well, if the Downtown News thinks we’re doing something right with our Black Dahlia, John Fante and other downtown-centered tours, the least we can do to say thanks is to offer two new bus tours celebrating the neighborhood as it was in the wild old days.

So on September 8, we’ll launch our first 90-minute Crime Bus tours, the back-to-back Hotel Horrors and Main Street Vice, with a cocktail/snack break between. You can ride one for $25 or both for $45, and we hope the lower price and shorter running time will be an opportunity for folks who’ve been wanting to ride for a while to join us. See you on the bus!

Dada Comes to Pasadena

July 22, 1927
Pasadena
heels
Pasadenans, beware!  If you’re Japanese, anyway.  See, there’s a “giant Negro” on the loose, and he’s a criminal.  His crime?  Hanging the Japanese upside-down.  

Seriously.  George Shimanouchi was minding his own business in the garage of his home at 126 Elevado Drive (now Del Mar) when the aforementioned giant negro (hey, not my nomenclature) arrived unbidden and hung the boy upside-down from a rafter.  

A Mrs. C. Duncan, 105 Elevado, heard someone yelling for help across the street and called it in; either she took her own sweet time about it or the authorities did, because when Detective Seargeants Mansell and Cheek arrived, Shimanouchi, now semiconscious, had been suspended head-down for nearly an hour.  

The boy held the opinion that his assailant planned to rob the house after tying him to the rafter, but officers found no evidence of entry.

(While Hippocrates was a firm believer in inversion therapy, practitioners evidently went to absurd lengths in sharing their craft before its popularization via American Gigolo.)

Only Two Years, Three Months, & One Week til this Whole Thing Blows Over

July 22, 1927
Anaheim

costshomeMrs. Geraldine Haster was a product of her time—too bad her time was so terribly and sinfully debased!  It was bad enough that she had taken to wearing cosmetics (!) but then she had even gone so far as to bob her hair (!!)!  Why not just tattoo "SCAPEGRACE" across your forehead, Geraldine?

When Geraldine returned with her mother and a party of friends from a motor trip to Tijuana (need we say more?) she found herself locked out of the home she shared with her husband, prominent Anaheim rancher Richard Haster.  Geraldine filed for divorce, charging cruelty.

On the stand today Geraldine alleged that life with ol’ Dick was no picnic either:  he took liberties with other women, was adverse to frequent bathing, read magazines while guests were in the house (!!!), stayed at the lodge until 4am, and, most hurtful of all, when she wore cosmetics, was told by her husband that she looked like a “Piute Indian.”  She thus demands division of property valued at $100,000 ($1,102,998 USD 2006).

lutherans!Yes, the twenties were a time of tumult and turmoil as conventions unraveled, exposing lots of hypocrisy and kicked-up heels.  Lutherans took especial offence at all this gayety, closing their thirty-fifth annual convention today with the adoption of a resolution deploring the tendency of American youth toward “extravagance, immodesty, and disrespect.”

Lutherans sleep easy tonight knowing that American youth turned out just fine.

Well, That Seems Like a Good Idea

July 21, 1927
Across the Mighty United States 

stuntdriver1

stuntdriver2 

Sadly, there’s no follow-up story about Burns’ journey.  We like to believe it involved something other than broken bones and twisted metal—“what a shame, the poor boy got all the way out here and crashed.”

Driving in Los Angeles is a far cry from the corn-flanked roads of Lawrence, Jimmy.

The Height of Mystery

July 19, 1927
Los Angeles

Who’s that bobbing in the wind high atop the Rose Room Ballroom at 8th and Spring? Why, it’s The Phantom of the Flagpole, a mask-wearing fella who swears he’ll break the flagpole sitting record of 17 days and 2 hours set by V.H. Crouch of New Bedford, MA. Just hours after Crouch came down from his eastern pole, The Phantom climbed his. Oh, heavy hangs the crown of the nation’s greatest flagpole sitter.

The Times reports that The Phantom is shaving and eating three meals a day (unsaid is what he does with these meals once he’s finished with them, if you catch our drift). He smokes 100 cigarettes a day and gulps black coffee most of the night, when he ties himself to the pole, just in case. He’s reading fiction magazines and would like an adventure novel sent up.

On July 26, The Phantom will call for a cork helmet to avert the awful rays of the sun. When The Phantom of the Flagpole finally comes down to earth on August 5th, he is revealed as Captain Robert Hull, and happily takes possession of a $2500 prize from Rose Room manager Joseph Lederer.

But while you cheer the achievement of our local pigeon, spare a kind thought for poor "Hold Em Joe" Powers, whose perch over the Morrison Hotel in Chicago ended at a disappointing 16 days and two hours on July 15, and unaccountably left him missing six teeth. (Scurvy? An excess of chattering? Only Joe knows, and he ain’t talking.)